Schunke, Annemarie;
(2023)
The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Anglophone Postcolonial Caribbean Literature of the Twenty-First Century.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Preview |
Text
PhD Annemarie Schunke_19060738.pdf - Accepted Version Download (6MB) | Preview |
Abstract
The sharp increase in publications on classicisms in the Black Atlantic over the last two decades points to the continuing significance of the Classics to postcolonial cultures but also to the unceasing importance of postcolonial cultures to the reshaping of Graeco- Roman antiquity and its legacies in the twenty-first century. Despite the topicality and political relevance of this area of research to current Caribbean culture, past investigations in the field have predominantly focussed on twentieth-century classical reception, the Hispanic or French Caribbean and other areas of the world, or have been limited to specific aspects of twenty-first century Antillean literature such as the reception of Greek drama. This study investigates the reception of Graeco-Roman antiquity in twenty-first century Anglophone Caribbean literature. It spotlights three aspects that are central to the contemporary Caribbean classical tradition: modern dealings with epic, classical reception in Caribbean women writers and the relevance of notions of exile and migration to Caribbean Classics. Through the analysis of pieces of prose fiction and poetry as well as through a survey conducted among twenty-first century West Indian literary voices including Ishion Hutchinson, NourbeSe Philip, Lorna Goodison and Shara McCallum, I relate the status and uses of the Classics in the present-day Caribbean to their colonial legacy, especially as a pillar of the British Empire’s education system. Simultaneously, however, I argue that classical civilisations and literatures not only continue to be appropriated by Anglophone Caribbean writers for the sake of maintaining and extending a distinctive, regional tradition of reading the Graeco-Roman Classics but also to serve anti-imperialist, canon-redefining as well as anti-racist, feminist and history- and identity- establishing purposes.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Anglophone Postcolonial Caribbean Literature of the Twenty-First Century |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Greek and Latin |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10170871 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
